by May Dawson
I hadn’t realized I left Mr. Zig-Zag Scar alive. Sloppy work. I shook my head at myself. I still had to talk to Elly about my solo Hunting escapade and now I’d have to tell her I’d Hunted sloppy a year ago. Carter was going to laugh his ass off at me. I’d never hear the end of it.
I’d been headed to dinner at Elly’s after work. Would she and the other Hunters be suspicious enough to come looking for me? Would they even have a chance at tracking down these dirtballs before they killed me?
Zig-Zag finally dropped his shirt. Thank Zeus. It was bad enough I was probably going to die here, I didn’t need to be blinded by his ugly stomach too.
“Now you’re going to be one of our breeders,” the first one promised me. “Once you give me a baby, I’m going to cut off little pieces of you until you beg me to let you die.”
“That’s no way to treat the mother of your child.” Thank god, that was a very long-term plan. They didn’t plan to kill me today.
Then Mr. Zig-Zag sat on a chair in the corner of the room, preparing a syringe. “Oh, you’ll love the way we’re going to treat you.”
Fuck. They planned to keep me drugged. The first flutters of fear rose in my stomach. I didn’t want to lose control. The thought that I wouldn’t be able to defend myself made something hollow open in my stomach.
The other guy, the one who still hovered over me, rubbed his hand over my thigh. His touch made my skin crawl, even through the scrubs.
He was close to me, but cautious, not bringing his face into striking range. I couldn’t slam my forehead into his nose or sink my teeth into his throat. I was no vamp or shifter, but I didn’t need to be something supernatural to be mean.
How the hell was I going to get out of this? I looked around frantically. There was a stained mattress in the corner of the room. I sucked in a breath. Did they have other girls in here?
I thought I’d killed these guys. Fury at myself washed over me. How many other women might they have hurt because of my failure?
“It’s going to be such fucking joy to turn you into a breeder,” Mr. Handsy promised me as his buddy Zig-Zag strolled over with the syringe.
I struggled harder, the legs of the chair rocking and scraping across the linoleum. But no matter how much my fingers tensed, I couldn’t move my duct-taped wrists. Zig-Zag kneeled behind me, out of sight, and then there was a brutal pinch as the syringe went into my arm. Whatever he injected burned through my vein.
“Lucky us.” Zig-Zag stood up. “We caught ourselves a Hunter bitch.”
“Unluckily for you,” a voice said from the doorway, “you also caught yourself a Fae bitch.”
The world went blurry around me as the three big Fae men moved into the room. Duncan was flanked by those two enormous black dogs, then they slunk into the shadows and seemed to disappear. I frowned at them. Was I hallucinating them? Were they real? The world seemed to be growing fuzzy.
The gratitude and relief that spiked through my chest at the sight of them could not be real.
Tiron strode across the room, his eyes widening as he took in the syringe. “They drugged her.”
Zig-Zag scrambled to his feet. “Who the hell are you?”
Tiron slammed him against the wall. His eyes were full of protective fury. Aw, that was sweet.
Tiron pulled him away, then slammed him into the wall again, so hard the drywall cracked. His voice was a growl: “What did you give her?”
“My own special blend,” Zig-Zag said, and then Tiron punched him across the face, once, twice. The man fell back against the wall, his eyes fluttering closed.
“Restraint, Tiron!” Duncan scolded him.
Handsy pulled a gun out of the waistband of his jeans, cocking it as he pressed the cold metal to my temple.
I should have been terrified, but I laughed at the cold tickling against my temple. It all seemed so surreal right now. The world tilted.
The third Fae moved so fast he was a blur—was that my imagination or was it real? Because he didn’t move like anything human. A gunshot split the room and splintered through the wall. The dogs snarled. Handsy screamed before he was whipped behind me, out of my line of sight.
The third Fae knelt in front of me. He rested his hands lightly on my knees. His face was careful, worried, and that made me want to laugh too. He looked so serious, and I tried to press my lips together, looking just as serious as he did.
“Look at me, Alisa. How are you feeling?”
“Are you even real?” I asked him. “My Faerie? Do I have a guardian faerie instead of a guardian angel?”
His eyes widened. Tiron tried to cover a laugh, turning it into a spectacularly unconvincing cough.
“If you’re real, I’m thrilled to see you,” I said. There was something that had worried me, something I was forgetting, and I frowned, trying to remember it. “Oh! Could you go see if there are any girls in the house? I tried to stop these guys before, but I failed. I hope they didn’t hurt anyone.”
The thought made my throat close up, the humor fleeing.
He studied me with curious eyes. “Fight their drugs, Alisa. I’ll go check the house.”
He squeezed my knees as he rose. For some reason, I didn’t mind him touching me.
“She’s high as can be,” Tiron said.
“This is another part of human culture you made yourself familiar with, didn’t you?” Duncan grunted.
“Cut her loose,” the lead Fae said as he went to the door. “I’m going to check the house.”
“Still following her orders, huh?”
“Shut up, Duncan.”
Duncan grunted. “I like her better tied up.”
“Why are you such a jackass?” Tiron asked as he knelt behind me. “She must have been scared. Have a heart.”
Cold touched my skin—metal, blade—and then my hands came apart. I shook out my shoulders as the tension released.
“You don’t realize yet that she doesn’t have one,” Duncan said. “You’re wasting your sympathies.”
Tiron knelt in front of me, cutting the duct tape that secured my ankles to the chair. Restless tension swept through my legs in relief at being free, and I stood, only to feel my knees crumble beneath me.
He caught me easily, sweeping me up into his arms. I breathed in his pine scent as he held me against his powerful chest. He carried me as if I weighed nothing.
“You’re all right,” he murmured in my ear, and his voice was low and sexy, a purr that I could feel through my body, into my bones. It made me want to relax into him and sleep.
But it wasn’t for myself that I was afraid, and I struggled to stay awake. “The girls…”
He looked down at me, a frown indenting the skin between his deep green eyes. “You’re nothing like I expected, Alisa.”
“The house is empty.” The leader came back, frowning. “But there are recent signs someone was contained here against their will.”
“Human problems,” Duncan said shortly. “We have our own problems back home, remember?
Wait. They wanted to take me back home. What was wrong there? I tried to ask, but the words came out slurred. Tiron gazed down at me with worried eyes.
“Let’s get her somewhere safe to sleep this off,” the other one said, still standing in the doorway. “One of us will keep a watch on the house. See if anyone comes and discovers the bodies, follow them if they do.”
Relief flooded my chest. I didn’t want to just abandon anyone who might need us. I tried to say something, but by the time I managed to form the first word, I couldn’t have imagined the end of the sentence. I frowned at them all, my head aching as I tried to think.
“Don’t try to talk,” Tiron murmured in my ear. The world was blurring, getting darker at the edges, as he carried me through what felt like endless rooms, as if time were slowing. “We’ve got you now, Alisa.”
Meaningless promises from people I didn’t know. And yet as the walls seemed to fall away around me, as the world seemed to fall away, I felt safe in
his arms.
Then darkness washed over me, and there was nothing else.
Chapter Nine
Raile
“Where’s my bride?” I asked Faer as soon as his blank-eyed human servant showed me into his study.
“Patience.” Faer stood at the bar, mixing his own drink, and he turned to me, holding out a pair of crystal goblets. “Nothing good comes without patience.”
My lips twisted into a grim smile. Nothing about Alisa was particularly good.
“Did you find your hobgoblin?” Faer asked me as I took the goblet from him.
I grunted in response. He didn’t need to worry about my antidotes to his sister’s old tricks.
He reminded me of Alisa with their shared sharp, mischievous features, though he wore his long lavender hair tied back, revealing the long, narrow points of his ears. He could never pass for human, but Alisa was softer-featured.
I’d thought for a while that perhaps Herrick had killed her. How strange to imagine her in the odd human world instead: the princess buying her food in the cold, bright aisles of a supermarket. Was she working? The thought made me want to laugh.
“You remain as sparkling a conversationalist as ever.” Faer raised his glass in a toast that I didn’t meet.
I took a long sip, studying him.
He went on, “I was going to ask if this was really how you wanted to punish her—it seems like punishing yourself too. But if you are going to be this boring with her, it does seem a fitting punishment. There’s nothing Alisa despises so much as boredom.”
“Then I don’t think she will care for the undersea.” But I already knew that. It was one of the many reasons she’d rejected me before.
I moved to the window, where the curtains shimmered, moving faintly in the breeze. The moon shone bright above the ocean tonight, sending silver ripples across the dark. “Will you be sad to send your sister away so soon after the two of you are reunited?”
“I think I’ll be able to soothe myself,” Faer said. “I’ve missed her this long, after all.”
I could practically feel Faer’s gaze as a prickle across my spine. “Perhaps our alliance will comfort your spirit.”
Faer used to be quite fond of his sister. I wasn’t sure what had changed between them, but his altered feelings left me suspicious.
Still, Faer was much changed from the boy I’d once known anyway. He didn’t seem to feel fondly of anyone these days.
“You know, I think it will,” Faer said. There was a creak as he took his chair in front of the fire again. “I heard from my scouts that she seems to have lost her memories. It will be interesting to see if she remembers you.”
I turned, my brows tilting. What a fascinating development.
“If she doesn’t, I would appreciate it if you didn’t alert her to our history.” Perhaps I could charm her. Perhaps she’d come along readily to her prison under the sea. A smile slipped across my lips.
Faer laughed, a cruel, hard sound. “That look on your face… it even scares me a little.”
“I would never harm your sister,” I promised him. Just because I wanted my revenge for the trick she’d played on me—and the embarrassment she caused my court and family—didn’t mean I intended to be cruel.
Though she might find it so.
He shrugged. “Harm her, don’t. I don’t care.”
I studied him. Once, he’d been a boy who waded into a nest of stinging water-beetles to rescue his sister when she fell into the lagoon outside the castle. Her elaborate gown threatened to drag her under. He’d drawn her out, the two of them both soaked to the skin, their long, pretty hair stuck to their angular faces. Then they’d collapsed in laughter on the bank at the sight of each other.
I’d fallen a bit in love with them both that day, although the next day, my father took me back to the sea. I’d thought about Alisa constantly since then, and when Alisa’s father reached out to me with a marriage offer five years ago, I’d jumped at the chance.
Faer was very different now. Was it possible the stories were true, and Faer was enchanted?
Or had he simply grown cold and psychopathic, as happened to almost any man with his kind of power?
“What is it, Raile?” Faer asked without looking up from his goblet. He’d grown tired of my gaze, apparently, even though he seemed to stare at me freely when my back was turned.
My voice came out flat when I said, “I’m simply having trouble containing my excitement at the promise of reunion with my bride.”
“I hope you can find a bit more enthusiasm when you greet her,” Faer said. “Or she might see through your ruse, even if she truly doesn’t remember you.”
Rude. The merfolk find me amusing.
I shrugged. I’ve never been as good on land as I am in the water, in any way.
But once I have my princess, I need never emerge from the sea again.
Chapter Ten
Alisa
For a few long minutes after I woke, I stared at the ceiling. My mouth was dry, my tongue thick. I swallowed with effort, listening to the low rumble of masculine voices in the next room.
I was in my own apartment.
I was not alone.
I never let anyone come into my apartment. Even Carter and Julian had barely been further than the front door; I didn’t want to give either of them the wrong impression.
The unnamed Fae stood in the doorway. His figure was tall and imposing—he looked every bit like a strange Fae god who had wandered into our world, even in a t-shirt and jeans—and I closed my eyes.
He was just too much. Too much arrogance, too much power, too much raw sexual desire when he was near me. Most of all, he was too much history. I didn’t remember any of that history, but it bothered me to know I had an ex-boyfriend who knew me intimately, while I didn’t know a damn thing about him.
Even when I feigned sleep, though, I was keenly aware of his body a few yards away from mine. It felt almost as if there was some kind of connection between us, something that made me hyper aware of his every movement.
“You’re awake.” His voice was low and sexy, and I felt that honeyed voice seep through my muscles, filling them with warmth. The effect he had on me was undeniable.
I sighed and gave up the ruse. As I raised my head, it felt as if my brain shifted in my skull. I still had a pounding headache.
“Would you like some water?” he asked, stepping into the room. He picked up a glass on the bedside table, then perched on the edge of the bed.
I shifted onto my elbows, then sat back against the padded headboard. “How’d you get in here?” My voice came out a rasp.
He held out the glass, raising his eyebrows, and our fingertips briefly overlapped before I pulled the glass away from him. I took a long sip of cold ice-water, then kept drinking eagerly.
“Duncan picked up your purse for you. Your keys and the like.”
“Duncan. That’s the grouchy one.”
“Indeed.” He smiled, a nice smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes.
“Who are you?”
“Azrael.”
“What kind of name is Azrael?”
“All right, Alisa. It’s a Fae name.” He tilted his head to one side, studying me. “How do you feel?”
I handed him back the empty glass, and he quirked an eyebrow at me but took it. I glanced down at the covers, at my scrub top. No one had taken off my clothes when they put me in bed. Good. “I seem to be in one piece.”
“You aren’t upset about what those men tried to do?”
I stared at him, my brows knitting together. Was he trying to make me upset? Was he trying to manipulate me into feeling I owed him something?
These guys wanted me to come back to the Fae world for some reason. I wasn’t going to trip over myself with gratitude.
“You had nightmares all night,” he added. “Do you remember them?”
“No.”
“I wonder what you dream about.”
I frowned at hi
m. I didn’t like his curiosity, the way he studied me. I wondered what he knew about my past that I didn’t. The thought that he held answers—that he held power over me—made me squeamish.
“Did you find a way to bring my memories back?” I demanded.
“You need to come home,” he said. “Whatever enchantment took your memories, it can only be lifted in the world of magic.”
I shook my head, even though it felt as if it might wobble right off my aching neck. Lord, last night had left me sore all over, and I ran my hand over the back of my neck, teasing my fingers over the tense muscles in my shoulder blades, trying to press out some of the kinks.
“Why are you so stubborn?” he demanded. “You’re royalty, and yet you don’t want to go home?”
“I want to go,” I said, surprised to hear the truth in the words as I said them. I couldn’t say home, though. “But someone took my memories, right? Someone hurt me there. And you want me to go over there with no idea what I’m walking into? I’m just supposed to trust you?”
Something flashed through his eyes, a look of horror that was there and gone before I could make sense of it.
“Yes, Alisa,” he said, reaching toward me, though he didn’t quite touch my hand. “You’re supposed to trust me.”
I cocked my head to one side. “You said you’re my ex-boyfriend. Why did we break up?”
He met my gaze levelly. For the first time, I noticed his eyes were purple, but not exactly. A deep blue around his pupil darkened as it radiated outward, specked with red flecks that bled into purple.
Monster eyes. Magnetic eyes. Either way, I could lose myself in his gaze. I blinked, forcing myself to look away, my chin rising.
“You’re the only one who knows that,” he said, and his voice was bitter. He rose, moving away from the bed. “You didn’t let me know in the kindest of ways.”
I chewed my lower lip at his tone. I couldn’t argue with him, but I doubted what he said. I didn’t think I was an unkind person.
“Were you my first boyfriend?” I asked.
He turned at the door. “Stop saying boyfriend. That’s not a word the Fae use.”